What is Home Health?

Home health is a service that sends nurses, therapists, and aides to the homes of patients who could benefit from skilled care.  Through home health, many of the services you or your loved ones might receive in a nursing home or hospital become available in the less costly comfort of your own home.  Home health can prevent unnecessary hospital readmissions and allows for shorter hospital and nursing home stays.

How AmeriCare Can Help

In our normal health care system, the health care providers you need are in offices and facilities.  You visit them, receive services and a plan, and then you are sent home to implement that plan.  Across the Dallas / Fort Worth region right now, thousands of retirees are at home struggling with adherence to special diets, understanding their medications, slow healing pressure sores, healing surgical wounds, worsening gait and balance . . . the list goes on and on. Results often include family strife, patient worry, unintentional non-adherence to medical plans, infected wounds, unnecessary fall injuries, ER visits, and unnecessarily inpatient stays.

The solution is AmeriCare Specialty Home Health.  AmeriCare coordinates with your doctor(s) about your diagnoses, your medication, your medical history, your doctor’s goals for your care, and the services your doctor would like to see delivered.  Then we send nurses, therapists, and aides to the homes of patients to make sure that your health and recovery proceed according to plan. According to your individual needs, you may find AmeriCare visiting multiple times per week for three to eight weeks.  AmeriCare practices care consistency in the homes of each patient, meaning we strive to send the nurses and therapists on our team whom you have already come to know and who know you.  With consistent, reliable service from caring and competent professionals, patients have peace of mind, family caregivers have needed support, and the medical plan has the best chance for optimal outcomes.

Services Offered

Think of AmeriCare Specialty Home Health for medical situation such as:

• You have been sent home after surgery with a wound that is still healing.  Regular nursing visits can help with wound care and provide skilled observation to make sure wound healing is proceeding well.
• You have not fully recovered from a recent illness, injury, or surgery.  Physical therapists can implement plans to ensure the fullest recover possible.
• You are learning to manage a new disability or physical limitation.  Occupational therapists and physical therapists can fit you for and train you with adaptive devices.  They can develop a rehabilitation plan to maximize independent ability.  They can teach strategies and home modifications designed to maximize independence, safety, and comfort.
• You have experienced an accidental fall in the past year. Coupled with altered gait or balance challenges, this means you are at heightened risk for a fall injury in the next year, and that you should receive a full home safety and gait improvement plan.
• Your parent’s doctor has prescribed new medications or a special diet and your parent is having trouble adhering to the doctor’s plan.
• You have a chronic condition that is trying to flare up and you are at particular risk of a flare-up (exacerbation) in the next few weeks, and that change in your condition could require a change in medications or land you in the ER.  Under these circumstances, Medicare will often pay for a nurse to visit your home regularly, so that closer supervision can get respond to your changing condition more promptly, prevent declines in health, and prevent ER visits or hospitalization.
• and many other plans of care that can be delivered by nurses and therapists.

Home Health Care Assessment

The fist step is to call or email AmeriCare Specialty Home Health and discuss your health situation.  If it is not the type of situation with which we are most helpful, we will refer you to the optimal service.  If it is the type of situation where AmeriCare can be of particular help, we will contact your doctor to receive authorization to visit your home.  Under those orders, we can visit and deliver an initial assessment.  If you do not meet Medicare’s criteria for full payment, we will notify you and not charge you for the initial visit.  Otherwise, Medicare will pay 100% for all visits.  If you do not have Medicare, we will check with your insurance company and let you know the exact amount of any charges in advance.

The AmeriCare initial assessment, roughly 30 pages of information and physical exam material, is particularly thorough and looks at each patient as a unique individual, as a whole person, and as a person who lives in the context of their own home, friends, and family.  Then, in collaboration with you and your doctor, we develop a plan of care that addresses your entire health situation and quality of life in the context of your home life.

If you or someone you care about could benefit from nursing or therapy at home, please start a conversation with us about those needs now.